Salim Abu Sadaq and six of his relatives scrabbled around in the soil of Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan cemetery for two hours yesterday, searching for a space in which to lay his cousin to rest. In the end, he opened his grandfather's grave and moved the older man's remains aside to make space for the body of his grandson.

After "The Beginning", the first chapter in the Qur'an, was read aloud to mark the end of a life, Abu Sadaq expressed misgivings about the shared grave. "I feel very bad about it. It hasn't happened before, but there's no space."

At the entrance to the cemetery hangs a makeshift sign, written on fabric and strung up by the ministry of religious affairs. "It is forbidden to bury here," it says, directing mourners to the newer cemetery on Gaza's eastern outskirts near Jabalia, where there is still some open ground.

The Sheikh Radwan cemetery has been closed for years, as have the other two in Gaza's densely populated city.

But Abu Sadaq's family had no choice.

The Israelis' intensive bombing of Gaza's eastern perimeter has turned the newer cemetery into a lethal ground and as a result families are forced to reuse old graves in the closed one, despite Islamic law normally forbidding that.

After digging for hours, Abu Sadaq rang a sheikh. "He told us that we could dig up an old family grave and move the remains to one side. We have to bury the body as soon as we can," he said.

Burial space is not the only shortage. Israel's 18-month blockade of Gaza has created a severe lack of concrete and building blocks, so families have been unable to build proper graves. Last year, before the tunnel economy began to take off, there was also a shortage of white burial cloth, required for Muslim funerals, forcing families to wrap their dead in whatever they could find.

"We are lucky here because we have an old grave," said Abu Sadaq as he buried his cousin, who died from cancer.

Nearby, Muhammad Khalil, 47, stood over the grave of his 19-year-old son, reading the Qur'an and crying. "I miss him," Khalil said of his son, who was a member of Hamas's military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

Khalil has visited the grave every day since burying his son on Saturday after he was killed as he was firing rockets at Israel's southern towns.

The grave, one of many mounds of earth strewn at random around the cemetery, has a concrete block at either end, marking it out. "It was very hard to bury his body. We tried twice before this place to dig a grave. Finally we found this place. We spent four hours searching and digging before we could bury the body," Khalil said.

"This is a war against Islam," he said. "They want us to leave our land but we are not, we are standing here. It's our right."

In the neighboring Al-Shejehah district, where 27 mourning tents were set up to receive visitors within the first two days of Israel's strike, the streets are empty and few are paying their respects, which is normally obligatory in this deeply traditional society.

Fadil Samara, 42, has attended just two of the eight mourning tents that were erected by close relatives and friends.

"It's not easy to move around, it's dangerous to go out. I'm embarrassed, but my friends and relatives understand," Samara said, ducking as another bomb exploded over the city.

A little while later a funeral procession of 50 proceeded up a street. Some of the mourners travelled in cars, but most walked, carrying the body foisted above their heads on a stretcher. They were just a few minutes from the cemetery when more bombs exploded over the city. The crowd dispersed, leaving just 15 to fulfil the family's duty.